25 December – I go back to you, who are the essence to me

I sometimes ramble on about countries gearing up for a win. You can think of your Russias or your Romanias or your Azerbaijans. But there's one country who is primed to win. They were lined up to win in Kyiv, until it all went wrong...

Back in 2013, a certain birthday boy Marco Mengoni rocked up to Malmö in typical Italian fashion, and proceeded to rehearse like he didn't care, yet still make everyone sit up and think this could be Italy's year. He did care, but wasn't even trying. Perhaps he'd had instructions from RAI not to win. Still, it's a class performance .